


Happiness

by Loser_Angel_666



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel and Dean Winchester in Love, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I'm a finale denialist but my brain is mean to me so I had to write this, Inspired by Taylor Swift, M/M, Requited Love, but make it sad, cas and sam are brothers in law but minus the marriage and dean is dead, fix-it but it actually doesn't fix it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 02:36:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28592625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loser_Angel_666/pseuds/Loser_Angel_666
Summary: the title is deceivingA newly human Cas lands on Earth, ready to live out a happy life with Dean, and somewhere a few states over, Dean is bleeding out on a piece of rusty metal in a barn and Sam didn't call an ambulance.orwhen Sam get's the phone call in the finale after Dean dies, it's from Cas who has given up everything again so he can be with Dean.
Relationships: Castiel & Sam Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 5
Kudos: 33





	Happiness

**Author's Note:**

> warnings:
> 
> grief, trauma, main character death, not a happy ending, but there's a tiny bit of a hopeful ending if you squint and interpret it that way
> 
> I like to think the finale doesn't exist, but when the phone rang after Dean's death I totally thought it was gonna be Cas and I haven't been able to get it out of my head
> 
> inspired by Happiness, by Taylor Swift because Evermore is amazing and I'm in love with her
> 
> (on a more personal note, grief sucks and if you have experienced the death of a loved one, I'm very sorry, I have too and I know how painful it is, I hope this fic isn't too emotionally taxing and I hope you're doing well <3)
> 
> also I usually write much happier fics, this is the first one I've written without a happy ending, so if this is too sad for you feel free to check out one of my other fics!

Cas takes the first breath of this new life with his eyes closed, face turned upwards. He was smiling, though the clouds covered the sun and the chill in the air snuck under his trenchcoat. This wasn’t like his last time waking up from the empty. It wasn’t sunny, and he wasn’t an angel. Maybe it was his newfound humanity, or maybe it was the contrast of Jack’s rebuilt heaven against Earth, but there was an ache in Castiel’s side and a pounding in his head and the smell of car exhaust. Still, it was life.

He digs his hands into his pockets, not expecting to find anything, but coming up with his phone, low battery but alive. Thanking Jack for small miracles, Cas scrolls through his contact list, starting to make his way towards the main road, clicking on Dean’s name. 

The phone rings.

***

The phone rings.

And rings.

And rings.

Sam hardly has time to sit around staring at the body. He hardly has it in him to look at the blood on his hands. He can’t think about very much at all or maybe his brain is blanking because the only thing that matters is his big brother. His big brother who raised him with love. Who cared for him above all else even with demon blood in his veins and lucifer in his head.

Dean’s phone rings and it reminds him that Dean used to be alive and that seems so hard to believe right now. It’s impossible that he’s dead, but just as impossible to think that he was okay and he was standing less than five minutes ago. Ten now. Maybe twenty.

But he was. He was alive. Last year, last week, an hour ago. Five minutes ago, Dean Winchester was breathing. Someone needed him enough to call him. Someone needed Dean right now and all Sam could do was look anywhere but the body. 

Sam needed him right now, he always has and he always will, so whoever’s on the other side of that phone can shove it where the sun doesn't shine. Sam heaves a sob and takes a gasping breath, he’s still clinging to Dean’s sleeve like a lost little kid in the grocery store. Like a lost little kid who still needs his big brother.

This life was worth something, wasn’t it? Dean Winchester lived for something, didn’t he? He lived to protect, to save, to love. He lived for Sam, he lived for Charlie and Claire and Jack, and Cas.

Now Sam has to look at this corpse, the face that doesn’t really look like Dean at all, though he’s looked like this a thousand times before. He had to lower this weightless heavy body to the ground. Onto the dirt, and it wasn’t holy enough for him, it wasn’t good enough, but Dean was never holy, he only seemed that way to Sam. 

Dean will lay across the backseat while Sam drives the impala back to the bunker, whispering prayers to Jack and blinking through burning eyes.

They should have known this was coming. There’s always a catch.

***

Cas tries Sam next, but he doesn’t pick up either. He doesn’t worry. 

He scrolls through more names and on the second ring the call goes through and Cas is met with skeptical silence.

“Cas?” The first contact with humanity. Claire Novak.

“Claire!”

“You’re alive?”

“I am. How are you?”

“I’m- I’m good but… you were gone, Cas. Dean said you were gone! Are you alright?”

“I’m good.” Cas breathes in deep, savoring the crisp air and smell of shitty fast food, looking around the parking lot, there’s an old man throwing something at a pigeon, a girl with neon green hair flipping off a truck that tried to back up while she was walking by. “It’s cold here, but it’s beautiful.”

“Good. Cool, that’s good, that you’re okay.” Claire says with a laugh in her voice. “Wait, cold? I thought you couldn’t feel cold.”

“Yes well, things change.” Cas grins. “I’m human!”

“You say that like it’s a good thing.”

“I’m happy with it, I chose this, in fact. The smells, the taste, the feeling of the air on your skin… I could never feel all the simple things before. It’s beautiful.”

“Well then… I’m happy for you… I guess,” Claire chuckles, still sounding hesitant.

“I will be sure to visit you soon,” Cas promises, because he knows she won’t believe he’s back until she sees him for real.

“Good.” She says and Cas hears the smile in her voice, in that moment, he is happy.

Cas had always assumed his ending would be one of unhappiness. Suffering and depression until his last moment, and though he had ended his life happily, the prospect of living out a full human one with Dean made his heart soar. He smiled to himself and found a park bench to sit on outside a McDonalds drive through.

“Have, uh, have you heard from Sam or Dean?”

“Uhm, no, not for a few weeks, you aren’t with them?”

“Not yet, they didn’t pick up. Jack wouldn’t have sent me back without warning if they were in danger though.” Cas says, Claire nods even though Cas can’t see her and they both revel in the fact that Cas is alive. He has a phone to his ear and an itch in his shoe and he’s starving, but he’s here, and isn’t that wonderful.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Claire says, voice going serious and Cas smiles.

“Me too.”

***

Fifteen minutes.

Fifteen minutes for things to go south.

Dean and Sam were in a barn with machetes and vampires and they were winning. They had been winning and it was only a matter of time before the last of the vampires were dead and Dean and Sam would be in the impala, driving the kids back to safety. Just in time to answer their phones.

If Jack was a doctor, he would know that it should have been impossible for Dean to die like that. He should have lived. And Jack is all knowing now… sort of, so how Dean Winchester was in heaven… he has no idea.

It’s a fluke. It has to be a fluke.

“Welcome,” He greets anyway, and he cradles his father’s fearful soul safely. Bobby will know what to say. If Cas were still here, he would greet him, it could still be their happy ending. But fifteen minutes ago Jack had promised Cas humanity and released him from heaven, sending him spiraling down towards humanity. For fifteen minutes, there was hope.

Maybe it was Jack’s fault, maybe he wasn’t ready to be a god.

***

Cas finds a five dollar bill in his pants pocket, and it doesn’t buy him much, but he’s able to get a burger and the lady at the counter lets him take a water bottle for free when the five dollars don’t cover it.

He eats quickly and once it’s gone, he realizes how hungry he must have been. There’s nowhere left to go and all he has now is his dying phone and fifty cents. He calls Dean again. No answer.

Cas starts to wonder if Dean is okay.

He starts to wonder if Dean isn’t picking up on purpose. He sends a text instead.

‘I’m not sure whether you’re getting my calls, Jack sent me back.’

A few seconds later.

‘I’m human now!’ along with a smiley face and a few other random emojis. Maybe it isn’t the time for emojis though.

Almost a half hour passes and he sends a prayer to Jack. A simple, ‘humanity is well so far, Dean and Sam haven’t picked up, they’re, right? It's not me, is it? I hope you’re well.’

Another ten minutes and Cas calls Sam. Sam wouldn’t ignore him, so when there’s no answer there either, he begins to worry. That’s when his phone clicks off in his hand. Dead.

There’s a payphone less than a block away and he only has the perfect amount of quarters for one call, so he punches in the number for one of the Winchester’s work phones, the only one he can recite from memory, it’s Dean’s. It rings.

It rings.

It rings for a worryingly long time. 

Finally someone picks up.

“Dean?”

“Cas?” Sam says through the phone.

“Sam! Yeah, it’s me!”

“How- what- how are you?”

“Jack. He saved me. Wheres D-”

“Where are you?” Sam cuts him off.

“I’m… I’m at-” Cas looks around and tells Sam where he is.

“Don’t move, I’m coming.” Sam says, and Cas doesn’t really think about how worn his voice sounds. He doesn’t really think about how he didn’t say ‘we’. He sits down on the pavement next to the payphone with his own dead cellphone in one hand and the wrapper of his burger in the other, and he waits with a smile on his face.

***

Sam doesn’t give Cas enough credit for his hugs, and maybe it’s because Sam really needed a hug, but Cas gives damn good hugs. He’s grinning and holding tightly onto Sam and it makes Sam smile back through his grief. He doesn’t say anything, because it hasn’t even been a full day, the body hasn’t even been buried yet. Cas deserved to hear it out loud instead of making inferences, but Sam can’t say it.

Cas’ face falls when Dean doesn’t follow Sam across the street. It goes blank of emotion when Sam motions for Cas to take the passenger seat. 

Sam doesn’t look in the backseat, but Cas does, just to make sure, and all he finds is a large bloodstain that Dean would probably have cried over. A stain on his baby? Cas looks at Sam, who grimaces and starts the car.

‘Jack? Is Dean… is he okay? Is he dead?’ Cas doesn’t say the prayer out loud, but Sam can see it on his face.

***

Back at the bunker, they’re greeted by a dog, and Cas squats to bury his face in her fur. Sam throws the keys down on the table, more carelessly than Dean would have ever allowed, and then he puts down a beer in front of Cas, uncapping one for himself as well.

Cas takes a sip, forgetting the bitterness of alcohol, and he puts it back down. His eyes fall on the initials carved into the table and he finds his own name there too. He wants to run his fingers over it. He wants to ask Sam what happened. He wants to hear Jack telling him that it was a mistake. Dean Winchester is still alive. ‘Here you go, here’s your purpose. Here’s your life, your love. I put it all back together for you, just as you did yourself all those years ago. He’s ready for you now, go be happy. Go be in love. Dean Winchester is saved.’ But Jack does not come down to Earth, Dean does not join them with a beer, Sam does not open his mouth, or even look at Cas, and Cas does not touch his name carved into the table.

He wants to go to Dean’s room and remember what it was like for this man to live. For him to live by his side. He wants to convince himself that it’s all in his head, it’s all a dream. This is the empty, an elaborate scheme. He wants Sam to fucking say something. He wants to go back to the empty.

“Sam?”

“He loved you, you know?” Sam says, and hell. What a way to open. What a thing to say.

“What?”

“Dean. He-” Sam clears his throat. “He told me. Just before the case, he said… he had to live, he had made a promise to himself that he would- that he would live a good life,” Sam’s voice is thick and then it’s breaking and he swallows and keeps going, sounding like the very words are tearing a hole through his heart. “He said he was gonna live. Because he was in love with you, and you believed in him.”

Cas can’t say anything, his eyes wide and brimming with tears. He almost hates Sam for telling him, but he holds the words close to his chest all the same.

“He wanted to honor you.” Sam finishes, almost in a whisper. 

“I’m sorry,” Cas says, and Sam nods.

“Me too.”

Cas can’t take another sip, not wanting to wash away this grief with liquor, but not wanting to feel anything.

“I loved him too.” Cas says quietly.

“I know.”

“I told him.”

“I assumed.”

“Is he gone for good?”

“I think so.”

“Jack?” Cas says aloud, looking upward. “Can-can you- he didn’t deserve-” But he’s not even sure how to ask. “Please?” he says and Sam is crying so Cas whispers, not wanting to cause him more pain with his own grief. 

“Jack, please,” but Jack doesn’t answer. “I’ll love him for a lifetime. I’ll keep loving him until long after I die.” he promises. Maybe Dean can hear him from heaven. Maybe Dean is watching their grief.

That night, and all the ones after it, Cas sleeps in Dean’s room. He wonders how long it will take before it doesn’t smell like Dean anymore. Before it only smells like Cas and dog fur. How long will it take for Cas’ memories to become hazy, no longer angelic, and how long will it be until Cas can hardly hear Dean’s voice in his mind, can hardly remember the prayers, what he sounded like when he laughed. He has everything Dean had owned, but he wishes he had more. He wishes he had Dean.

***

“He started sleeping there when you were gone.” Sam says, as if that would explain why he had put Dean’s dead body in Cas’ bed. 

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“I miss him.” Cas says. Sam sniffs.

“Me too, Cas. Fuck. I miss him,” and they lean into each other.

They have the funeral that afternoon, and everyone comes. Jody, Donna, and the girls, Garth and his family, Bobby, Charlie and her girlfriend. All the hunters who had known and respected Dean. Cas was there and Eileen was there and Miracle was there. 

They all watched Dean’s body burn, feeling a little more damaged, as if they hadn’t already lost enough. Cas held onto Miracle's leash like a lifeline, held Claire’s hand when it was offered. He and Sam fell into Jody’s hugs and she needed them as much as they did. 

Cas was desperate in his grief. Part of him was desperate to be alone. But when Claire squeezed his hand and Jody leaned her head on his shoulder and Sam hugged him like he used to hug Dean, he realizes that he has a family. He’s had it for a while. He misses Dean like hell, but at least they didn’t cast him aside now that Dean was gone. They held him in their grief like he was a comfort to them as much as they were to him.

***

Jack watches Dean settle into heaven. He seems happy. Not peaceful, not at home. Cas is on earth, but time passes quickly in heaven, it’s not Dean he’s worried about. He can hear Cas’ prayers, and he can feel himself aching to help. Begging himself to make an exception. They’re your family goddamn it. Make an exception. 

He feels Cas’ pain like it’s his own and he sees Dean get into his car with a hopeful smile. He’s going to look for Cas. 

Make an exception Jack. He doesn’t fucking deserve this. This was never meant to happen. This isn’t how it was supposed to go.

A large group of people surround a burning body and Jack slows time so he can cry alongside them. He puts a hand on Cas’ shoulder and he hugs Sam and he’s not really physically there, but he’s everywhere and they must know he loves them. He loves Dean. They must know he’s still their child. He grieves for them, though he doesn’t feel the death the same way. Dean is right here, after all.

Jack closes his eyes and sighs, a decision set in his mind, he flies to Dean, startling him and the Chevy veers into the wrong lane for a minute.

“Jack!” Dean grins. “Good to see you, kid.”

“I missed you too. I only wish it weren’t so soon.”

“I’m sorry, it wasn’t- I wasn’t ready either.”

“I know you weren’t.” Jack says. “We need to talk.”

***

The next day, Cas looks at the job application on the desk. Under that is a journal, similar to John’s only Cas had never seen it before. Inside is documentation of every new monster they had come across, starting with angels, starting with Castiel. Leviathan, Jefferson starships, werepires and goulpires, the darkness. Vamp-mimes. Cas sits on Dean’s bed with his journal and sifts through the pages, the drawings and words bringing out parts of Dean to life that had been kept under wraps. 

Cas knew the deepest parts of Dean, but he had never seen it from Dean’s perspective like this. A documentation of not just the ugly, but the beauty too, the art, the things he had only acknowledged to himself.

The entries become less about their hunts and cases and more about Dean’s personal life. Until one of the very last pages, one last documentation of Cas. This drawing of him isn’t shadowed and winged with a blade in his hand, he has on a cowboy hat and a smile and the title isn’t ‘Castiel’ it’s ‘Cas’.

‘He wanted me to live. I don’t know what he saw and I don’t know if I will ever see it myself, but he saw a good man so I’m going to be as good a man as I can. I picked up a job application yesterday. Cas, I promise, I’m going to do my best.’

***

There'll be happiness after you  
But there was happiness because of you  
Both of these things can be true  
There is happiness  
Past the blood and bruise  
Past the curses and cries  
Beyond the terror in the nightfall  
Haunted by the look in my eyes  
That would've loved you for a lifetime  
Leave it all behind

~ Happiness, Taylor Swift

***

Cas doesn’t know whether he wants to leave Dean’s room and never look back at it, too overwhelmed with the fact that Dean Winchester isn’t coming home this time. Or if he wants to stay here forever, reminding himself over and over that Dean Winchester was once alive and the world is better for it.

“Cas? Eileen called.” Sam says through the door, he opens it before Cas responds, taking in Dean’s room. They’ve both been in here. But while Sam would rather lock it away, Cas wants to soak in it forever. 

“Go ahead,” Cas tells him, it’s the first time Sam has left his own room since Cas got here and he suspects Sam has been declining all of Eileen's calls as well. He needs this. “Tell Eileen hi for me.”

Sam looks at Cas again. “I didn’t leave Dean alone when… I can’t just leave you. You’re still family, Cas.”

“Are you coming back?”

“Of course. I can have Eileen come here. She hasn’t gotten to see you yet.” Sam says. Cas nods. Sam can’t decide if he wants to look at Cas or the bedroom, but both feel just as painful. “Are you going to be okay?”

“Yeah.” Cas says, and he hasn’t decided if that’s the truth yet. If he even gets a choice. 

His voice is wrecked. He hasn’t peeled himself from under these covers and he knows he feels the worst he’s ever felt, but he’s making a promise to Dean. 

Sam leaves the doorway with a hesitant nod and Cas pulls Dean’s journal from under his pillow. It’s not finished, there’s still a quarter of the journal left blank. A full story that hasn’t been told. Maybe Cas will finish it. 

He opens to the first blank page and at the top he writes ‘Dean Winchester’. ‘Micheal's sword, the righteous man, human.’

He can’t draw, but he tries, and he ‘s sure he’ll find a picture of Dean somewhere to glue in. He writes too, it ends up more of a letter and he finishes it by adding his own promise to the bottom.

‘I saw a good man because that’s what you are, Dean. You didn’t need to believe it, but you were. You were kind and you were deserving and you were completely and wholly beautiful. I make to you the same promise you made me; to live. To do the best that I can. I love you, Dean Winchester, and I will until the day I die. Until then. Love, Cas.’

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure if I was just having an emotional day or if this is actually sad, so please lmk what you think
> 
> I have one or two more fics based off of Happiness by taylor swift, maybe I'll make it a series (even though I already have an evermore series)
> 
> <3


End file.
